Browsing: Carrier On-Board Delivery plane

Dear VRC-40 “The Rawhides,” I’m just writing to apologize for getting airsick in your C-2A Greyhound. It was certainly unintentional. You handled the plane with steady hands as we flew from Naval Air Station Mayport, Fla., to the carrier Enterprise last week. We even had weather on our side, allowing for a particularly calm flight. If only my stomach was able to manage my breakfast as well as you flew the COD. Usually I handle flights pretty well, but the combination of the smell of aviation fuel, the lack of windows, the heat and the sheer grittiness of the Navy’s…

The carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower is underway in the Atlantic conducting carrier qualifications for naval aviators, but it’s the unglamorous and often tedious work below decks that keeps the fliers going. A zillion things can go wrong with an aircraft — especially aircraft that operate in a maritime environment and bounce onto aircraft carriers. That requires checking everything from the big stuff to internal leakage. All the work has to be tracked. Then there’s the support for the support — the ancillary work. These unsung efforts underpin what everyone is hoping for topside: safe flight operations.

A lengthy post-availability at-sea period just ended for the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, which blitzed through sea trials, flight deck certification, carrier quals, and 3M (Maintenance Material Management) inspections following nine months of shipyard work that ended in mid-June. During that time, Ike’s primary lifelines to shore were the reliable Carrier On-Board Delivery planes that deliver mail to ship and shore and carry personnel and spare parts back and forth. Filling the bill for Ike was Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 40 out of Naval Station Norfolk’s Chambers Field. It goes without saying that CODs “deliver the mail.” According to VRC-40’s…